Free Tiddly Jinx by Liz Schulte

pull?” When we bonded in purgatory a piece of my soul had blended with his, and part of him wanted to finish the job.
    “I’m just hungry,” he said quietly. “I’ve been here since last night.”
    “Why?”
    He looked off to the side, but his eyes kept twitching back to me as if he couldn’t bear not to look at me. “Why indeed.”
    Damn it, he was frustrating. “Corbin?”
    “When she comes back she will go home. It wasn’t hard to find her house. Why are you here?”
    “I did a tracking spell and followed her essence. I don’t know why it would bring me here if she weren’t here, as well. Unless…” I plopped down on her chair. Unless she wasn’t in this world and her home was the most concentrated collection of her essence.
    “Unless what?” Corbin sat as far away from me as he could.
    “Go eat.” I ignored the fact that he would probably select an unknowing and unwilling human to take the edge off, shortening her already short life to extend his. “We’ll talk when you get back. I’m not going to shout at you across the room.” Seeing him on edge like this plucked at my nerves.
    He stared at me longer than was comfortable before he slipped out of the house, so quiet I wouldn’t have believed he was gone if I hadn’t witnessed it. I stared at the door. Frost wasn’t here. My tiny bit of hope vanished. Not all witches went dark when they used black magic, but not all witches had my checkered past. My soul was hardly a beacon of light as it was. Part of me—the elf half—craved power, it always had. It drove me to do things and to follow people that I shouldn’t. Casting this spell scared the hell out of me, though I could never admit it to Cheney, the coven, or Sy. Shit, Sy. I still hadn’t told him anything that was happening. I leaned back in the chair, tension finally easing, one hand on the bag and the other massaging my temples. I let my thoughts run through all the different ways the current plan could go wrong.
    A hand brushed my hair, making me snap back upright.
    Corbin smiled down at me. “Miss me?”
    “That was really fast.” There was no way he found a willing donor that fast, especially not among humans. The contents of Frost’s apartment made it clear we weren’t in the Abyss anymore—there was a television here. Corbin didn’t respond, but this time he sat close enough his knee nearly brushed mine.
    “What’s bothering you, pet?”
    Corbin and I had no pretense, no expectations of one another. He simply saw me, which was frightening and comforting. “Every time I try to fix a problem, I make it so much worse.”
    He nodded. “So stop trying to fix them and accept things how they are.”
    “The Pole can do so much damage to the Abyss.”
    He shrugged. “That can be someone else’s problem.”
    I shook my head, but smiled. “Says the guy who has spent the last twenty-four hours in a necromancer’s house waiting for her to come home. Why are you here if you weren’t looking for the Pole?”
    He let his knee press against mine—protected by the layers of material between us, I didn’t feel the need to pull away. “Do you wish to hear the words again?”
    Air evacuated my lungs. No, I didn’t need to hear him say he loved me again. Not ever again. “I love Cheney.”
    “That doesn’t change matters. You carry my essence as I carry yours. You are as much mine as this hand.” He held out his right hand in front of me and wiggled his long, elegant, pale fingers. “Even if this hand were to decide it doesn’t love me, it’s still part of me.”
    “I’m going to marry Cheney.”
    He leaned in close, his lips nearly brushing my ear. “It won’t change anything.”
    I glanced at him out of the corner of my eyes. “If I were evil, would that change anything?”
    “Don’t tease me, love. You know perfectly well that would change everything.”
    And I did know it. The same part of me that craved power and excitement and danger was also the same part of me